True Crime Australia: Rise of the online predator1:38

Carly Ryan was a 15-year-old girl from South Australia who fell in love with a charismatic guitarist named Brandon Kane. But Brandon was just an internet persona, and the person behind the persona had sinister intentions with her.

A notorious child sex predator secretly joined an online social network site and had social media profiles under different names and multiple email addresses, a court has heard.

Convicted paedophile Christopher Paul Winters, 52, whose record of sex offences against young boys goes back to the 1980s, breached the Child Protection Register within days of signing it.

Details have emerged as Winters successfully claimed he is too poor to pay an $1100 court fine for failing to report he had joined online social networking site Meetup.

The 52-year-old serial sex offender, who is paid a disability pension for “psychological and physical issues”, lodged his court severity objection appeal using Legal Aid.

Winters is infamous as one of NSW’s first paedophiles to be held in prison after his sentence ended for failing to address his offending behaviour, under new child sex offender laws.

In the 1980s, in the rural town of Cootamundra, Winters twice broke into children’s bedrooms, including that of two boys aged five and seven, by removing flyscreens from their windows.

In 1998, he was jailed for nine years for 13 sex offences against nine boys aged between eight and 15 years in the town of Wagga Wagga.

The offences included two counts of sexual intercourse with a boy under the age of 10, four acts of indecency with a victim under 10, three indecent assaults of boys under 10 and sexual intercourse with a child aged under 14.

Court documents seen by news.com.au reveal Winters, who lives in Sydney’s Eastern suburbs, has Skype under an online pseudonym, four email accounts and is a registered sex offender in NSW at least until 2027.

Under the Child Protection Offenders Registration Act, Winters must report any affiliation with a club or organisation which has child membership or child participation “including but not limited to RSL clubs, sporting organisations, church groups, libraries”.

Winters, who belongs to the social club of a well-known Sydney hotel, handwrote “yes” to the above reporting rule on his declaration.